What’s Missing from the Adventist Trinity Doctrines?

30 April 2024

The original version of this article was published on Adventist Today as “How Our Adventist Pioneers Got the Trinity So Wrong.”

Ambiguities in the Adventist Trinity Doctrines

Historically, Adventists have had a difficult time understanding the Trinity doctrine. Many early Adventist pioneers regarded Trinitarianism as a perversion of the truth about God.¹ Joseph Bates rejected Trinitarianism because he thought that it taught that the Son is identical to the Father: “Respecting the trinity, I concluded that it was an impossibility for me to believe that the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father, was also the Almighty God, the Father, one and the same being.”² J.N. Loughborough considered Trinitarianism “pagan and fabulous,” writing, “It is not very consonant with common sense to talk of three being one, and one being three. . . . If Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are each God, it would be three Gods; for three times one is not one, but three.”³ J.H. Waggoner argued that Trinitarianism undermines the Adventist atonement doctrine by maintaining that only Christ’s human nature died: “Trinitarians hold that the term ‘Christ’ comprehends two distinct and separate natures: one that was merely human; the other, the second person in the trinity, who dwelt in the flesh for a brief period, but could not possibly suffer, or die; that the Christ that died was only the human nature in which the divinity had dwelt. . . . Thus the remark is just, that the doctrine of a trinity degrades the Atonement, resting it solely on a human offering as a basis.”⁴

Although the Adventist Church gradually began reversing its majority antitrinitarian position during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, significant problems remain in the official formulation of the Trinity doctrine in the 28 Fundamental Beliefs. A glaring problem with the Fundamental Beliefs about God’s nature is that they offer no explanation of the relationship between the three persons of the Godhead. Although the second Fundamental Belief, entitled “The Trinity,” affirms that the Godhead consists of three persons, each characterized by immortality, omnipotence, omniscience, transcendence, and omnipresence, it does not explain their relationship.⁵ Are the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit one God because each person has these infinite attributes? How are these three infinite persons a unity? How can we deny that the Godhead is a pantheon of three gods, each possessing these attributes independently of the others?

The third, fourth, and fifth Fundamental Beliefs try to answer these questions, but they only introduce more ambiguities and difficulties. The third Fundamental Belief, about the Father, states, “God the eternal Father is the Creator, Source, Sustainer, and Sovereign of all creation. He is just and holy, merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. The qualities and powers exhibited in the Son and the Holy Spirit are also those of the Father.”⁶ This doctrine ascribes several vocations to the Father: creator, source, sustainer, and sovereign. However, these vocations do not establish a relationship between the Father and the other persons of the Godhead, but rather a relationship between the Father and created beings. The doctrine also ascribes several qualities to the Father: justice, holiness, mercy, graciousness, patience, love, and faithfulness. But since these qualities do not belong exclusively to the Father, and since the doctrine also states that the qualities and powers of the Son and Holy Spirit also belong to the Father, we cannot distinguish him from the other persons of the Godhead by these qualities. In short, the third Fundamental Belief does not describe the relationship between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Rather, it leaves one to conclude that the Father is different from the Son and Holy Spirit because he has a different vocation relative to his creatures.

The fourth Fundamental Belief, about the Son, further obscures the relationship between the persons of the Godhead. Its full text states:

God the eternal Son became incarnate in Jesus Christ. Through Him all things were created, the character of God is revealed, the salvation of humanity is accomplished, and the world is judged. Forever truly God, He became also truly human, Jesus the Christ. He was conceived of the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary. He lived and experienced temptation as a human being, but perfectly exemplified the righteousness and love of God. By His miracles He manifested God’s power and was attested as God’s promised Messiah. He suffered and died voluntarily on the cross for our sins and in our place, was raised from the dead, and ascended to heaven to minister in the heavenly sanctuary in our behalf. He will come again in glory for the final deliverance of His people and the restoration of all things.⁷

Several elements of this doctrine are worth noting. First, it distinguishes the Son from the other persons of the Godhead by affirming that he is the only divine person who became incarnate as a human being, Jesus Christ. He is therefore the only person of the Godhead who could be affected by temptation, suffering, and death, at least insofar as he was a human.

Second, the Son has several other vocations that distinguish him from the Father and the Holy Spirit. He is the means by which the universe was created. This indicates one relationship between the Father and the Son: while the Father initiated the creation of the universe, it was through the Son that this act was directly accomplished. Nevertheless, the exact nature of this relationship remains unclear. Is the Son an instrument used by the Father to create the world? If not, how can we ascribe the world’s creation to the Father if the Son directly created it?

Another vocation attributed to the Son is that he is the means by which God’s character is revealed to the universe’s inhabitants. The Son reveals the Father’s character by perfectly exemplifying his righteousness and love and performing miracles through the Father’s power. Again, the exact nature of this relationship needs clarification. How can we know that these characteristics belong to the Father and not only the Son, if the Son is the direct means by which righteousness, love, and supernatural power are revealed? How does the Son’s sinlessness exemplify the Father’s righteousness? How does his self-sacrifice on the cross exemplify the Father’s love? How do Jesus’ miracles prove that the Father is powerful?

A third vocation attributed to the Son is that he is the means by which humanity is saved. The ninth Fundamental Belief describes how this was accomplished. It states that the Son was the means by which God saved humanity since it was through the Son that he “vindicates the righteousness of God’s law and the graciousness of His character.” Because of “Christ’s life of perfect obedience to God’s will,” as expressed in his law, God could vindicate his law by showing that its condemnation of sin is just. Through Christ’s death, he could ensure that the penalty for sin was paid on behalf of those who believe Christ is the Son of God. Through Christ’s resurrection, God “proclaims God’s triumph over the forces of evil,” or those who deny that his law is righteous. In short, atonement consists of vindicating God’s law, which is the only means by which humanity can be saved since humanity must be saved from the evil forces who have persuaded us that God’s law is not righteous.⁸

Setting aside this doctrine’s insistence on obedience to the law as the ultimate purpose of salvation, which in my view amounts to a doctrine of righteousness by works, it also obscures the relationship between the Father and the Son. To state that Christ vindicated God’s law by perfectly obeying his will suggests that Christ could have contradicted God’s will through disobedience. Does this mean the Son’s will is distinct from the Father’s? If so, how can we affirm the unity of the Godhead, since it would be possible for the three persons to act independently of the others? If the Son’s will is the same as the Father’s, how does Christ’s perfect obedience to the law vindicate it? The justice of God’s law cannot be demonstrated by showing that God can obey himself—unless, tautologically, we define “justice” as obedience to God’s law, in which case there is nothing to show! Only if there is a standard of justice higher than God’s law would it be necessary to show that it is just.

The fourth vocation attributed to the Son in the fourth Fundamental Belief is that he is the means by which God judges the world. This alludes to the twenty-fourth Fundamental Belief, “Christ’s Ministry in the Heavenly Sanctuary,” which states that in the heavenly sanctuary, Christ is currently accomplishing “a work of investigative judgment” through which he is showing the “heavenly intelligences” who among the dead will be resurrected to eternal life and “who among the living are abiding in Christ, keeping the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus.”⁹ However, as with the other vocations ascribed to Christ, this does not provide us a means of distinguishing the Son from the Father. Why should we believe that the Son, not the Father, shows the heavenly intelligences who will be saved?

A final element worth noting about the fourth Fundamental Belief is its suggestion that the Son was “conceived of the Holy Spirit.” Does this mean that the Son was generated from the Holy Spirit, and if so, does this not confuse the Holy Spirit with the Father by suggesting that the Holy Spirit is Christ’s biological father? As I will explain below, the traditional doctrine of the Trinity maintains that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. However, the fourth Fundamental Belief introduces an ambiguity by not clearly distinguishing between the conception of Christ in his human form and the generation of the Son as an eternal, coequal person of the Godhead.

The fifth Fundamental Belief, about the Holy Spirit, seems almost conciliatory in its attempt to affirm the traditional doctrine of the Trinity, especially with its insistence that the Holy Spirit “is as much a person as are the Father and the Son.” It states, “God the eternal Spirit was active with the Father and the Son in Creation, incarnation, and redemption,” but it does not explain how this was the case. It describes the Holy Spirit’s vocations as inspiring prophets and influencing people to accept salvation through Christ. It also identifies two relationships between the Holy Spirit and the other persons of the Godhead. First, the Holy Spirit “filled Christ’s life with power.” Does this mean that without the Holy Spirit, Christ had no power? If so, how can we affirm that Christ was innately God, who is omnipotent? Second, the doctrine states that the Holy Spirit was “sent” by the Father and the Son. Here we find the sort of processional language that we should expect in any orthodox formulation of Trinitarianism, which distinguishes the persons of the Godhead by their processional relationships. However, we could interpret the word “sent” to mean that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have distinct wills and that unless the Father and Son had been him to assist believers, he might not have done so.

In short, the only means that the Fundamental Beliefs offer us to distinguish between the persons of the Godhead are their respective vocations. However, this distinction admits several possible interpretations of the relationship between the divine persons. Are the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit merely “modes” of a single God, by which he is conceived as acting in different capacities to achieve his various goals? Or do the divine persons each possess a distinct will, by which they act independently from each other? If the only way of distinguishing the persons of the Godhead is by their vocations, both options are plausible. However, both of these positions have historically been considered heresies. The former option is modalism, while the latter is tritheism or Arianism.

I propose that what is missing from the Adventist Trinity doctrines is an explanation of the relationships between the persons of the Godhead. Only if the persons of the Godhead are distinguished by these relationships and not by their vocations can we affirm the distinction between them. For this reason, Trinitarianism distinguishes the divine persons by their relationships of procession from the Father. I therefore want to examine the main components of Trinitarianism, as traditionally formulated. To this end, I will consider Thomas Aquinas’ discussion of Trinitarianism in his Summa Theologica. After examining Aquinas’ views, I will conclude this article by offering specific suggestions about how the Fundamental Beliefs on the Godhead can be better aligned with Trinitarian orthodoxy.

The Trinitarian Doctrine of Procession

The orthodox formulation of the Trinity doctrine dates to 325 when Christian bishops from throughout the Roman Empire met at Nicaea in present-day Türkiye to resolve controversies concerning the relationship between the three persons of the Godhead. Organized by Constantine I, the Council of Nicaea sought a consensus on the relationship between the Father and the Son, which was the subject of controversy between the followers of Athanasius, who believed that the Son was “begotten” of the Father and had no beginning, and the followers of Arius, who believed that the Son was created by the Father and had a definite beginning. Ultimately, most delegates at the Council of Nicaea rejected the Arian position. In response to Arius and his followers, they formulated the Nicene Creed, which remains the standard statement of Trinitarianism among mainstream Christian denominations.

In the Nicene Creed, the relationships between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are described as processional in nature. It states that there is only “one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth.” There is “one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, . . . begotten, not made, consubstantial to the Father. Through him all things were made. . . . By the power of the Holy Spirit he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary, and was made man.” Finally, there is “the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son.”¹⁰ In short, the Son was begotten of the Father and consists of the same substance as the Father; the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son; and the Son became incarnate by the power of the Holy Spirit.

The Nicene Creed does not explain the meaning of the processional verbs “to beget” and “to proceed.” We must turn to later Christian philosophers, such as Thomas Aquinas, to clarify these terms. In his Summa Theologica, Aquinas follows the Nicene Creed in distinguishing the Son and the Holy Spirit by how they proceed from the Father.

Aquinas begins by asking whether processional relationships can meaningfully be ascribed to God. Aquinas states, “Divine Scripture uses, in relation to God, names which signify procession.” He cites John 8:42, in which Christ tells the Jewish leaders that the Father sent him. However, he explains that the processional verb “sent” should not be understood as a relation between cause and effect or between an agent and its actions. The Father did not cause the Son and the Holy Spirit to exist as the Arians maintained. This would suggest that the Son and the Holy Spirit, being mere creatures, are less divine than the Father, whereas 1 John 5:20 states that the Son of God “is the true God.” Nor are the Son and the Holy Spirit distinguished from the Father by their activities or vocations, as the modalists or Sabellians maintained. In John 5:19, Jesus tells the Jews, “the Son can do nothing on his own.” However, if this is the case, the Son cannot be distinguished from the Father by his acts. Aquinas argues that despite affirming different views of the relationship between the persons of the Godhead, the Arians and the Sabellians committed the same error. They assumed that the processional relationships described in the Johannine literature were outward acts. By contrast, the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity affirms that these processional relationships are intrinsic to God. Aquinas states, “Procession . . . is not to be understood from what it is in bodies, either according to local movement or by way of a cause proceeding forth to its exterior effect. . . . Rather it is to be understood by way of an intelligible emanation, for example, of the intelligible word which proceeds from the speaker, yet remains in him.”¹¹

According to Aquinas, two kinds of processional activity may be found in intellectual beings like God and human souls: acts of intelligence and acts of will (volition). The former are motivated by a desire to know the truth, while the latter are motivated by a desire to obtain what is beneficial or beautiful. Aquinas argues that God, no less than the human soul, is characterized by acts of intelligence and will. Specifically, he claims that the procession of the Son from the Father is an act of intelligence and that the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son is an act of volition—although, as he emphasizes, these processions are not extrinsic, but intrinsic to his nature.¹²

The Son proceeds from the Father by an intellectual operation that Aquinas calls generation, which has a similar meaning to the verb “to beget.” Aquinas clarifies that the eternal generation of the Son from the Father should not be understood in a naturalistic sense. There are two senses of the word “generation.” In the material sense, generation describes anything that comes into existence through composition or generation and ceases to exist through decomposition or corruption. In the formal sense, Aquinas states, generation describes an activity that properly “belongs to living things; in which sense it signifies the origin of a living being from a conjoined living principle.” Aquinas affirms that in the case of natural living things, both senses of the word “generation” are applicable. However, in the case of God, only the formal sense of the word “generation” is appropriate. The generation of the Son from the Father “proceeds by way of intelligible action” and “by way of similitude, inasmuch as the concept of the intellect is a likeness of the object conceived.” That is, the object conceived in the intellect of God, namely the Son, has the same nature as God himself, just as, by analogy, children have a similar nature to their parents. The Father and the Son have “the same nature, because in God the act of understanding and His existence are the same.” God is, by definition, an omniscient being who necessarily exists, so when the Father conceives the Son as existing, the Son necessarily exists, just as the Father does.¹³ In other words, God begets himself by understanding himself; the Son is God generating himself by his intellect.

The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son by an intellectual operation analogous to human volition. Volition is an act whereby an agent proceeds towards what it desires or loves. It differs from intellectual procession because rather than seeking to form a mental representation of an object similar in nature to the agent, volitional procession seeks to bring its object into fulfillment, regardless of the similarities between the agent and the object. Thus there are two different kinds of intellectual operations intrinsic to God. Aquinas explains, “what proceeds in God by way of love, does not proceed as begotten, or as son, but proceeds rather as spirit; which name expresses a certain vital movement and impulse, accordingly as anyone is described as moved or impelled by love to perform an action.”¹⁴ The Father and the Holy Spirit have the same nature because the object of God’s volition is nothing other than himself, who is always and already perfect. God is, by definition, an omnipotent being who necessarily exists, so when the Father wills that the Holy Spirit should exist, he necessarily exists, just as the Father does. The Holy Spirit proceeds from God’s love for himself. In other words, the Holy Spirit is God conceived as impelled by his will towards self-actualization.

The Biblical Warrant for Trinitarianism

In Aquinas’ view, since the procession of the Son and the Holy Spirit are consequences of God’s omniscience (his infinitely powerful intellect) and omnipotence (his infinitely powerful will), God cannot be conceived except as a Trinity. The relationships of procession between the persons of the Godhead are essential to God’s nature.¹⁵ However, Aquinas denies that the Trinity can be known through natural reason alone. He states, “by natural reason we can know what belongs to the unity of the essence,” but not the divine persons’ “proper attributes, such as paternity, filiation, and procession,” by which they are distinguished.¹⁶ These defining attributes, “paternity,” “filiation,” and “procession,” can only be obtained from the Bible. It matters that these terms should be used to describe the divine persons because the Bible identifies them as their proper names.

The Father alone can be described as the unbegotten principle from which the other persons of the Godhead proceed in their respective ways.¹⁷ “Father” is his proper name, and “paternity” is the name of the relation that distinguishes him from the other divine persons.¹⁸ These proper names can only be accepted on the Bible’s authority. Aquinas explains that all paternal relations that we find between God and his creation or among created things are imperfect reflections of God’s paternal relation to himself: “the perfect idea of paternity and filiation is to be found in God the Father, and in God the Son, because one is the nature and glory of the Father and the Son. But in the creature, filiation is found in relation to God, not in a perfect manner, since the Creator and the creature have not the same nature; but by way of a certain likeness, which is the more perfect the nearer we approach to the true idea of filiation.” Thus, if we derive the idea of divine paternity and filiation from our understanding of created things, we would be unable to arrive at an adequate conception of the Father and the Son. Our natural knowledge of the Father and the Son must be supplemented with a special revelation from God. We only know that there is a distinct Father and Son because the Bible names them.¹⁹

The proper name of the Son, who is so called because he is eternally generated from the Father, is the “Word.” This name “signifies an emanation of the intellect,” just as the words we speak proceed from our intellects as signifiers of objects represented in our minds. However, whereas in human language, our words are imperfect expressions of our imperfect knowledge of things existing outside us, the Word, as an emanation from the intellect of God, is a perfect expression of God’s perfect knowledge and is intrinsic to his nature.²⁰ A related name for the Son is the “Image” of the Father, which not only emphasizes that the Father and the Son have the same nature but that the Son is in the Father’s intellect (just as when we say that we “imagine” something, we mean that we have formed an image of that thing in our mind).²¹

Aquinas notes three proper names that the Bible applies to the Holy Spirit. The first, “Holy Spirit,” is derived from 1 John 5:6–8, which describes how we recognize Jesus as the Messiah.²² Modern translations of this passage, such as the New Revised Standard Version, say, “This is the one who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ, not with the water only but with the water and the blood. And the Spirit is the one that testifies, for the Spirit is the truth. There are three that testify [in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit, and these three are one. And there are three that testify on earth]: the Spirit and the water and the blood, and these three agree.” Many scholars consider the portion of verses 7–8 contained in brackets, called the “Johannine comma,” to be a later addition since it is absent from many textual authorities. Nonetheless, by Aquinas’ time, the Johannine comma was considered canonical, and to name the divine person who proceeds by love from the Father and the Son, we can regard this insertion as sufficient, regardless of its authenticity.

The second proper name of the Holy Spirit is “Love,” as suggested by Romans 5:5: “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” Although this name also applies to God in his entirety, it especially signifies how the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son.²³ It also represents the relation of love subsisting between the Father and the Son. Aquinas quotes Augustine: “The Holy Ghost is he whereby the begotten is loved by the one begetting and loves his begetter.”²⁴ The procession of the Holy Spirit from this reciprocal relation is one reason why the Holy Spirit is said to proceed from both the Father and the Son, and not from the Father only (as Eastern Orthodox Christians believe).²⁵

The final proper name of the Holy Spirit is “Gift.” Just as the Son is named in virtue of his filial relation to the Father, so the Holy Spirit is called “Gift” because he proceeds as a gift from the Father and the Son.²⁶ The biblical authority for this name of the Holy Spirit is Acts 2:38, in which Peter says that those who repent in the name of Jesus Christ “will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.”

The Meaning and Equality of the Divine Persons

The three persons of the Godhead are thus called by their proper names, which signify the processional relations by which they are distinguished. As we have seen, these processional relations are intrinsic to God’s nature, since they are the processions of God’s intellect and will by which he eternally actualizes himself as a self-subsistent being. When we use the term “person” to describe these processional relations, this does not mean that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit each have an independent intellect and will, just as humans have independent cognitive faculties. Aquinas explains, “‘person’ in general signifies the individual substance of a rational figure,” or what distinguishes one rational individual from another. When applied to a human being, “it signifies this flesh, these bones, and this soul, which are the individuating principles of a man.” However, “person” must be applied to God plurally. In God, there are three relations of procession. These three relations are essential to God’s nature, and as such, they are self-subsistent, since God is self-subsistent. The word “person,” when applied to God, therefore denotes the three self-subsisting relations in God.²⁷

Since the persons of the Godhead are hypostases (self-subsisting beings) of the same essence, they are necessarily equal, since one person does not possess the divine qualities to a greater or lesser extent than the others.²⁸ Moreover, although there is an order in procession (the Son proceeds from the Father, and the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son), there is no order of priority among the persons of the Godhead. As Aquinas argues, “in God the relations themselves are the persons subsisting in one nature. So, neither on the part of the nature, nor on the part of the relations, can one person be prior to another, not even in the order of nature and reason.”²⁹

Because the persons of the Godhead are all equal, there is no eternal hierarchy among them—not even a priority based on their respective activities or “roles.” The power of the Son is equal to the power of the Father since he proceeds by eternal necessity from the Father’s intellect. The Son can do anything that the Father can do (John 5:19).³⁰ Moreover, the vocations of the Son and the Holy Spirit are only temporal. Rather than being essential to their divine nature—since the only attribute that is essential to the Son and the Holy Spirit as such are their processional relations—their vocations were simply the most conducive means of obtaining our sanctification.³¹ It is therefore senseless to state that the Son is eternally subordinate to the Father, as many proponents of headship theology maintain as the basis of their argument that the subordination of women to men is modeled after the intra-Trinitarian relationship between the Father and the Son. Christ was only subordinate to the Father (or rather, himself) insofar as he is conceived as a temporal, human being, but not in his eternal nature as God. As Aquinas states, “the Son is greater than himself in human nature,” or insofar as he was a human being.³²

One might ask why only the Son became incarnate if the persons of the Godhead have all the same powers and abilities. Aquinas affirms that the other persons of the Godhead had the power to become incarnate.³³ However, he notes three reasons why it was more appropriate for the Son to become incarnate than the Father or the Holy Spirit. First, because the Son is properly called the Word, and because it was by God’s word that things were created, there is a natural affinity between the Word and created things. Aquinas states, “He has a particular agreement with human nature, since the Word is a concept of the eternal wisdom, from whom all man’s wisdom is derived. And hence man is perfected in wisdom (which is his proper perfection, as he is rational) by participating in the Word of God.” Second, those whom God has preordained to be saved are called the sons of God, according to Romans 8:17. “Hence it was fitting that by him who is the natural Son, men should share this likeness of sonship by adoption.” Finally, the incarnation of the Son was intended as the remedy for the first sin, which consisted of seeking inordinate knowledge of good and evil. “Hence it was fitting that by the Word of true knowledge man might be led back to God.”³⁴ For these reasons, incarnation is properly attributed to the Son, rather than the Father and the Holy Spirit.

When explaining the role of the Holy Spirit at Christ’s incarnation, we must avoid suggesting that the Son was begotten or generated at the moment of his conception or that the Holy Spirit effectively begets the Son. The Son preexisted his bodily form as Jesus Christ since he is eternally generated from the Father. Moreover, the Holy Spirit proceeds eternally from the Son, not vice versa. Rather, the Holy Spirit is simply the efficient cause of Christ’s body.³⁵ The conception of Christ is attributed to the Holy Spirit for three reasons. First, as noted above, the Holy Spirit is God insofar as he loves himself. Since the world is the product of God’s love of himself, and since the incarnation occurred because God loves the world (John 3:16), it is appropriate that the incarnation of Christ should be attributed to the Holy Spirit. Second, Jesus Christ is not called the Son of God due to his merits (Christ did not earn his divinity through moral perfection), but because of God’s grace, which as a gift from God is attributed to the Holy Spirit in 1 Corinthians 12:4: “there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit.” Finally, the purpose of the incarnation was to enable us to share the likeness of God’s Sonship by adoption, as stated above. Galatians 4:6 says, “because you are children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’” We can therefore conclude that by the same Spirit through which we become the children of God, Christ also became the Son of God, insofar as he was incarnate.³⁶

How the Pioneers Misunderstood Trinitarianism

Aquinas states that we can only know these intrinsic processions in God’s mind because he has revealed them to us in the scriptural tradition. Apart from the Bible, which has named these persons and their processions, we would have an inadequate conception of the Trinity, since we would be modeling our understanding of these processions on human faculties.³⁷

This was Bates’ mistake: by basing his understanding of the Son’s generation from the Father on human procreation, he imagined it was impossible to identify the Son with the Father, just as we cannot regard human children as identical to their parents. Bates didn’t understand that when God begets himself through his intellect, the resulting person—the Son—is still intrinsic to the Father (they have the same nature), whereas human children have different natures than their parents. Rather than taking God the Father’s relation to the Son, as revealed in scripture, as the standard of paternal relations, Bates took human fathers’ relations to their children as the standard and then projected this standard onto God.

Likewise, when Loughborough considered it nonsensical “to talk of three being one,” he was right to suppose that we cannot distinguish the divine persons through human reasoning alone. We tend to distinguish one thing from another by considering their external relations (such as their physical boundaries) with other things. However, the relations among the divine persons are internal to God and therefore invisible to us apart from divine revelation. We can only accept Trinitarianism by faith in the scriptural tradition, through which God has revealed himself to us.

Waggoner mistakenly assumed that the Son is distinguished from the Father by his vocation rather than by his origin of procession. He imagined that what primarily distinguishes the Son from the Father is that he became a human and died to obtain our salvation. However, Trinitarianism teaches that the eternal generation of the Son from the Father, and not the Son’s soteriological role alone, is what makes the Son distinctive. When we affirm that Christ is the Son of God, we are affirming that Jesus is God’s incarnate intellection of himself and that we can know God through faith because God’s self-understanding has become an embodied, historical entity. Christ achieves our salvation by revealing God’s selfless love for us. His death was not a “human sacrifice,” not only because Jesus was no mere human, but because salvation comes through Christ’s resurrection rather than his death alone. God comprehends himself, in the person of his Son, as a selfless, loving being whom death cannot defeat because he exists by eternal necessity. Christianity teaches that salvation is participation in God’s eternal life through faith in Christ, in whom God became a historical reality.

Avoiding the Pioneers’ Mistakes

Unfortunately, the 28 Fundamental Beliefs have not adequately corrected the early Adventist pioneers’ mistakes. They do not sufficiently convey that the divine persons ought to be distinguished not by their vocations but by their origins of procession. Consequently, many Adventists, wrongly distinguishing the divine persons by their roles, have concluded that the Son is eternally subordinate to the Father rather than coequal with the Father. (They believe this hierarchy is the model for the relationship between men and women.) Moreover, some Adventists, fearful of anything superficially resembling “spiritualism,” deny that the Holy Spirit is a distinct person, regarding him as simply the life animating the Father—as though God consists of an inseparable body and soul like people. They believe that the Spirit is simply God acting in his capacity as a living entity. Both errors result from the mistaken view that the persons of the Godhead are or ought to be distinguished by their activities or vocations.

To correct these mistakes, I’d like to propose several amendments to the Fundamental Beliefs that would better align Adventist doctrine with Trinitarian orthodoxy.

Fundamental Belief 2 (“The Trinity”). I would modify the first sentence of this doctrine to say, “There is one God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, a unity of three coeternal, coequal, and consubstantial Persons, differentiated by intrinsic relations of procession that are essential to God’s nature” (the italics indicate the added portions). This would indicate that the divine persons are essential to God’s nature and that there is no order of priority among them.

Fundamental Belief 4 (“The Son”). First, I would modify the first sentence of this doctrine to say, “God the eternal Son, who is eternally generated from the Father through God’s intellection of himself, became incarnate in Jesus Christ.” This expresses what is distinctive about the Son, specifically the kind of procession that distinguishes him from the Father and Holy Spirit.

Second, to clarify that the Son was not begotten by the Holy Spirit, instead of saying, “He was conceived of the Holy Spirit,” I would modify this to say, “His human body was conceived of the Holy Spirit.”

Third, rather than saying that Jesus “perfectly exemplified the righteousness and love of God,” I would say that he “revealed the righteousness and love of God.” This is to avoid suggesting that the Father and the Son have distinct wills or that Jesus could have not exemplified God’s love and righteousness, which is impossible.

Fundamental Belief 5 (“The Holy Spirit”). First, I would modify the first sentence to say, “God the eternal Spirit, sent by the will and mutual love of the Father and Son, was active in Creation, incarnation, and redemption.” Here, I have omitted that the Spirit was active “with the Father and the Son,” as though they are autonomous entities. This expresses what is distinctive about the Holy Spirit and clarifies his relation to the other persons of the Godhead.

Second, I would modify the second sentence, “He is as much a person as are the Father and the Son,” to clarify what “person” means in the context of the Godhead, such as by saying, “He is as much a person, or a relation subsisting in God’s nature, as are the Father and the Son.”

Third, I would omit the sentence, “He filled Christ’s life with power,” since the power of the divine persons is the same and the Bible also attributes Christ’s power to the Father (see John 5:19).

Fundamental Belief 9 (“The Life, Death, and Resurrection of Christ”). I would omit the phrase “In Christ’s life of perfect obedience to God’s will,” because it suggests that Christ’s will was distinct from the Father’s. Rather, I would say, “Because the Father and the Son have the same will, the incarnate Christ perfectly revealed God’s goodness and love. Through Christ’s suffering, death, and resurrection . . . .” (The additional benefit of this amendment is that since the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, who have the same will, it guarantees a more coherent understanding of the Holy Spirit.)

I also recommend modifying any other Fundamental Beliefs that implicitly suggest that the Son’s will is distinct from the Father’s or that the Son is eternally subordinate to the Father.

Works Cited